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Operation: Swan Lake
Operation: Swan Lake is a contract between House Cygnus, certain members of the Protractors of Lovelace, and The Deathless that resulted in Thorg’s Imperial Quarantine. None of the contract’s details have been made public, even documents mentioning it are redacted to unreadability. The First Planetary Evaluation Team In 2963, 35 years after the Burning of Thorg, The Masked Emperox sent a team of Triangulum planetologists, Cygnus bio-evaluators, along with Crux diplomats and Aquila security personnel on Thorg to evaluate the condition the planet now found itself in. Officially this was the first time anyone from outside the planet set foot on it since the evacuation, however the Deathless had operated in small teams on the planet for some time now. Naturally, the mercenaries had offered their services to the team but the nobles refused, preferring their capabilities than paying the price the mercenaries were asking for. According to official reports the last transmission from the team was sent on the 24th of February, 2963 by Lord Ecologist Triangulum Ishii Gendo requesting for immediate evacuation for him and another member of the team. The Deathless report brought to the attention of the Imperial authorities details the gruesome state of the two bodies that were found by the recovery team. In truth the Lord Ecologist survived along with the sole surviving Cygnus bio-evaluator. At their request their death was declared and they secretly contacted their respective houses to send their full report. House Cygnus, along with House Triangulum, through the Protractors of Lovelace, then arranged for The Deathless to receive the protection contract, paying the mercenaries their due in exchange for their silence on the matter. The Subsequent Evaluation Following this three other teams were sent to Thorg to further inspect the native biosphere. These teams were composed of solely Triangulum, Cygnus, and Deathless personnel. This time, although the official goal was still to evaluate the recolonization potential, the teams had another objective: evaluate the local biosphere’s potential for weaponization. Two years later the final report was out: Officially Thorg needed to be put under Imperial Quarantine and the Deathless were strongly recommended for the job, as their professionalism and knowledge of the terrain ensured the evaluation teams’ safety. With Cygnus and Triangulum political pressure the Quarantine was decreed by the Masked Emperox in 2965, along with the renaming of Koschei and the granting of its Imperial lease to The Deathless. In exchange, they were granted the holy responsibility of enforcing the Quarantine on Thorg, so that the planet’s deadly existence couldn’t affect the sector at large even more. In truth the planet wasn’t deadlier than any other hell-hole the sector’s populace lived in. Sure the human tribes that formed and its mutated fauna were dangerous and even deadly to the unprepared, but nothing to quarantine a planet over. However the local fauna, flora, and tribes would be perfect for living test subjects and the basis for genetically engineered bio-weapons. As such, an excuse was needed to ensure secrecy, and a quarantine enforced by mercenaries who prided themselves on their confidentiality given the appropriate price was an excellent excuse indeed. The Contract As it was arranged between the parties, House Cygnus and the Protractors of Lovelace were to maneuver politically around the Masked Emperox to ensure the Quarantine was declared and that the Deathless were given rule over it. In addition the mercenaries were to be paid handsomely. In exchange The Deathless were to run security on the planet and accept to help in the testing out and deployment of whatever weapons were created in the laboratories. The mercenaries didn’t think twice and promptly accepted the deal that was offered, after all, they got two whole planets out of the deal and had no room to complain. In order to keep the secrecy only the scientists who were to work on the project were subjected to Undying LoyaltyTM, as such the Deathless could keep on taking contracts against House Cygnus and Triangulum while still keeping the contract going. Operation: Swan Lake Thus began Operation: Swan Lake fully, the Deathless moved troops and construction crews on the planet to start “properly enforcing the quarantine”. At this time they began construction of Critias Base under Thorg’s deepest and largest lake. The location proved to be most appropriate, as the lake’s high mineral and metal content shielded the base from any orbital scan, effectively hiding it from outside onlookers. Once the base was established the scientists and their families were moved in so that the work could finally begin with as little distraction as possible. In the following years Critias base was quite prolific in the prototypes developed in its halls and test tubes. Some of the most visible and prolific bio-weapons which thrived in the Thorgian biosphere were under the form of animals, usually hybrids of the Silicon-based life forms native to the planet and some offworld genome. As such, the Thorgi, the Ichor Fiend and the two-step stinger scorpions were all released into the Thorgian wild to great effect. The Thorgi in particular proved to be extremely useful to the Deathless, who still use the beasts to this day. Under the direction of Lord Ecologist Triangulum Ishii Gendo, Critias’ floral division also made some proper progress, engineering the fast spreading war vine and perfecting what would be soon known as the Human Voiced siren pitcher plant. The scientists’ main goal however was to see how far the planet itself could be weaponized. Through a process they titled “Gradual Planetary Hostilization”, they made the planet deadlier by the decade. Progress at first was slow, since the researchers had to make sure planetary changes weren’t too drastic and still looked “natural”. Over time however, through imported terraforming technology and Cygnus biochemical weapons Thorg changed almost irrevocably, its biosphere drastically different from before the Burning and even after it. Almost every aspect of Thorgian life forms were mutated to make them as dangerous as possible to human life. Human life itself was not spared from the change, social engineers observed and effectively cultivated tribal life on Thorg to their liking over the decades. Some tribes were left alone as “control groups” while others were guided towards certain paths, all in order to see if social engineering could in fact, be weaponizable. For anyone scrupulous enough to care the native Thorgians were declared non-humans by the researchers and the Deathless rank and file weren’t informed of the experiments conducted. After all it wasn’t the poor soldier’s business whether or not the tribe he was getting shot at by was engineered for aggression, they just needed to shoot back. In the meantime the Deathless did as they were supposed to on Thorg, ensuring that the researchers on Critias base were left alone from prying eyes and keeping the patrols going. They even thrived on Thorg, using the newly hostilized planet as the perfect training ground for their combat units. In addition they were more than happy to test their mettle against the newly formed bio-weapons, even finding a use for some of those. The End Operation: Swan Lake came to an end as the War Against the Artificials became apparent, the former allies within Critias base were now enemies and couldn’t work with each other anymore. Both House Cygnus and Triangulum had recalled their members to their homeworlds and canceled their contract with the Deathless, who themselves had reservations about continuing the contract. Following the premature evacuation Critias base was effectively shut down and sealed, leaving the facilities, and the bioweapons it housed, abandoned. Critias base now sits at the bottom of the Thorgian lake, hidden from the outside world and left for disrepair. The Legacy Operation: Swan Lake sees barely any mention in official Deathless reports or histories. The whole thing has been outright deleted from the records, with only scarce mentions of Critias base and Swan Lake in some reports, but nothing more. However in recent months, with the official formation of the Immortal Association, Deathless researchers and extraction teams have been scouring Thorg for abandoned Swan Lake installations, mainly Critias Base itself, to find any potentially useful information for their newer research project. Category:The Deathless